


young and restless

by eudaimon



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Characters Under 18, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 02:59:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matilda is the sort of small town that makes a boy feel like he's dying - towards the end of high school, they both want to escape in different ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	young and restless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PJVilar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJVilar/gifts).



> Like most stories, this is based on a request by my beloved Jen, for a high school AU. I've never written a High School AU. This is what I ended up with. I meant for it to be longer, but it will go no further than this, so I present this in the spirit in which it was meant. As a vignette. Jen is still sort of (but not quite) the Gunny Wynn to my Nate.

Sometimes, you can almost hear it - the way a town like this might hold its breath. Mathilda isn't much for anyone to write home about: a dusty little bit of nothing, hunkered in around the high school and the football field; a few factories, cradled in fields.

Sometimes, Nate feels like he's suffocating in his own skin.  
A thing he knows: that there has to be more than this.

He has this habit of underlining words in pencil, turning over the corners of pages so that he doesn't lose his place. A month or so ago, an English teacher set a stack of books in front of him. _Read these, Mr Fick_ , she'd said. _At least one of them will change your life._  
At this age, it's difficult to tell whether he wants to fuck her or just be her (or someone like her) by the time he's older.

And he doesn't want to be _that_ cliche, that one who read Kerouac and _found himself_ but there is something beguiling about it. Still, it's Hemingway who really gives him pause. Hemingway and Heller and Iain M. Banks.

He likes the biggest ideas, set alongside the quieter ones.

In a book, he underlines it. _I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true._  
One way or another, it's what he wants to believe.

*

Brad Colbert's favourite time to run is in the early evening, when the track is quiet and the only noise is the football team running drills in the violet dusk. He likes to push himself, to feel that moment when his brain shuts off and his body takes over, the pull in the long muscles of his thighs and the ache in his lungs, the throb of his pulse, and, over and over, one thought.

 _Faster_.

It's this town - this stupid little town and this fucking school and, yeah, he's supposed to feel privileged and yeah, he's supposed to be getting a strong start in life but, sometimes, he still gets sidetracked by birds overhead, the way they wheel and dive. Still running, he watches one bird all but fall out of the sky, catching itself at the last minute and diving back upwards into all of that aching blue. 

(A girl who though she was in love with him once told him that she couldn't decide if his eyes were like the ocean or the sky; it had been hard work not to laugh at her, at the time. Now, she's in love with someone else, all change, but Brad still finds himself distracted by the birds).

He stops, a foot or two shy of the finish line, bending over his knees as he catches his breath. He's got the presence of mind to keep moving, bouncing, stretching. You can't just stop dead; your muscles remember when you let them down. Your body's the last one to forgive you, in the end.

"Who are you racing, Brad? Who are you trying to beat?"

He hadn't even realised that anyone was there. It takes a moment to find him, but there he is - perched at the top of the bleachers, all scruffy hair and tattered running shoes. Nate Fick, with his battered paperbacks and his bitten nails. Brad's always been peripherally aware of him: sitting four rows back in class, always doodling on the covers of his notebooks but also ready with an answer for any question; reading (but not actually eating) through lunch; getting to detentions five minutes later than everyone else and sitting staring out of the window, watching the world go by.

He finds himself grinning. 

"That's a pretty heavy question, Fick," he says, shrugging his shoulders, trying to loosen them up. They're not friends, not exactly, but they have talked, swapping notes in the library, shoved into corners at parties. Brad knows enough to know that he likes Nate, pretty instinctively. It doesn't hurt that he's pretty fucking hot, too - a fact which is only highlighted when Nate stands up and stretches his hands up over his head, flashing the thinnest strip of pale skin between his jeans and the worn hem of his shirt. Brad's never been particularly worried about the fact that he seems just as drawn to guys as he is to girls. Fuck it - his body is a temple, and it wants what it wants.

"Come on, man," says Nate, bending to pick up his shitty backpack, slinging over his shoulder. "Let's go."

Brad wonders when they became people who go anywhere together, but he doesn't ask. He falls into step with Nate, instead. Right then, it's easier to follow.

(It doesn't even occur to him until later that Nate called him _Brad_. Nobody does that but his mother).

*

Hell, as it turns out, isn't quite other people, but this party is close. He lost sight of Nate in the crowd and hour or so ago, ended up with a lap full of half-naked, pneumatic brunette - a cheerleader, he thinks (Molly? Becky? They all seem to blur together, and they all look Mollys and Beckys, after a while). He doesn't really want to be here. A year ago, he'd have been happy here, drinking warm beer, making out on someone's father's pool table. But he's getting closer and closer to graduation, closer to having to go to school, find a career after it. Lately, he's started talking about joining the Marines after college, just for the look that it puts on his dad's gentle fucking face.

But who knows what comes next? He's eighteen years old. The future is a flat line.

Outside, he finds Nate lying on the lip of the pool's blue glow. Somewhere along the way, he's shed his hoodie, left his bag under a chair but there he is, wearing Ray Bans in the dark. He's got his jeans pushed up over his knees, one foot trailing in the water. The strip of skin above his waistband is visible again, his shirt ridden up and Brad can vividly picture getting down on hands and knees to bend and kiss it, brush fine hairs and the edge of Nate's navel with his lips. He feels like it like a physical ache, that desire; he shoves his hands into his pockets and makes fists instead.

"Far be it for me to impose my traditional, conservative values on your undoubtedly Bohemian fucking spirit, Nate," he says, a smile just twitching at the corner of his mouth, "But the party's inside."

"Fuck the party," says Nate, not lifting his head. "I'm bored of the party." He pulls off his shades, fixing Brad with green-eyes, so clear, disconcertingly direct. "I'm bored of all of these people. You know that most of them are never going to make it the fuck out of Mathilda? Because why would they, right? There's work, there's booze, there's people to fuck and when you get bored of those people, then you just move one to the fucking right. Nobody dreams here, Brad. Nobody believes in anything. That's the problem. Our grandparents moved here and got stuck and we've been stuck ever since. We're halfway into our own graves, Brad, and we don't even see it. Because safe is relative and Mathilda is fucking _safe_."

He spits it out like an insult.  
Brad takes a deep, centering breath.

"How much have you had to drink?"  
"A lot. Not enough."  
"Mmhm."

He sits down to sit on the textured ground beside Nate. On a whim, he tugs off his battered sneakers, rolls up his jeans and sticks his feet in the water. After a moment, Nate sits up too, so close that they're pressed together, thigh to thigh, and all Brad can focus on is the heat of him. None of those Mollys or Beckys prepared him for this.

"Come on," he says, nudging Nate with his shoulder because it feels like the safest thing to do. "I'll drive you home."  
"Haven't you..." Nate pauses, frowning down at the ripples that their feet are making in the water. "Haven't you been listening to anything I've said. I just..."

Brad nods. 

"I've been listening," he says, turning his head and Nate's so close that it's easy (so fucking easy) to lean in and graze his lips against the corner of Nate's mouth. They're still, like that, for a moment, and then Nate pulls away from him, all of a sudden.

"What're you doing?" Nate asks.  
"I thought you wanted to..." He fumbles for the word.  
"Jump," said Nate. "I want to jump."

And the pool is right there, _right there_ , blue and wide like a stand-in for forever. And safety? Well, safety's relative.

It's too easy to slide down into the water, tugging Nate with him. The water's cold, and they both go under for a moment, come up kicking. The night's warm but the water's not and Brad's immediately pushing himself in close, his body against Nate's, chest to chest. It's Nate that leans in, Nate that kisses Brad first. Brad's had his fair share of kisses, between the Mollys and the Beckys, the anonymous boys and girls and the other girl, the girl he fell in love with when he was thirteen years old, the one that he's been learning how to not be in love with for a year, now. A broken heart, he's learning, is like any other scar; it thickens and loses sensitivity, in the end.

They kiss like that, both of them anchored to the side of the pool by overlapping hands. Nate's thumb grazes along along the length of his. It's only a little touch but it goes straight to his dick. The water makes him feel displaced, like he's separate from his own skin. Nate kisses like he loves it, like he's desperate for it. Brad doesn't remember ever seeing him with _anyone_ , not boys or girls, not at school or parties. Nate's got friends, sure - Brad's seen him hanging around with Tim Bryan, with Mike Wynn, with Stafford and Lilley. It's not like Nate's a loner, but Brad finds that he's just realising that he doesn't really know anything about him at all.

He'll worry about it later.

Wet denim is impossible to figure out. In the end, he settles for pushing his knee between Nate's thighs, pinning him against the wall of the pool so that they can grind awkwardly, squirming together, breathing harder, kissing deeper until Nate breaks the kiss with an abrupt yelp. It takes Brad another couple of moments, keeping Nate there, right there, pushing into the heat of his body until he comes, right there in his pants, in the pool, his face pushed into the soaked curve of Nate's neck.

He doesn't want it to be awkward, but it sort of is. Inevitably, maybe - who does this? Brad hauls himself up out of the water and then bends, holding out his hand to help Nate out. The joy's kind of gone out of it, now that they're just wet, a mess in his shorts, the breeze turning chill. He does lean in and kiss Nate again, damp and off-centre.

"I'll drive you," he says, but Nate shakes his head.  
"I'll call," he says, bending to pick up his shades. 

It isn't until he's gone, melted into the chaos in the house, that Brad realises that he doesn't think that Nate's got his number.

Fuck.

"What the fuck have you been doin', Homes?" Ray Person appears, skinny and tan under his quiff, arms spangled with tattoos. He's got two beers in one hand and he offers Brad one. It's cool and clean and he drinks half of it off in one go. 

"Ray, you wouldn't believe me if I fucking told you," he says. He barely believes it himself. He puts the beer down unfinished - his head's spinning fast enough. "Come on, Ray. I'll drive you home."


End file.
